HL7 Acknowledgment (ACK) Mode

HL7 Acknowledgment (ACK) Mode

An HL7 acknowledgment (ACK) message acknowledges that a destination has received an HL7 message. A negative ACK (NACK) message acknowledges that the destination is aware of the transmission but did not capture the message.

The following figure illustrates how Ensemble upholds HL7 message conventions for sending ACK and NACK messages:

Commit ACK — The Ensemble business service returns an ACK to the source application as soon as it commits the transaction that saves the data received from that source. It sends a NACK if this proves impossible for some reason. The Ensemble business operation may be set up to interpret an ACK or NACK from the target application, but it does not return those messages to the source.

Application ACK — The Ensemble business service does not send an ACK or NACK to the source application until one returns from the target application by way of the Ensemble business operation. The business service returns the ACK or NACK that it receives from the business operation.

* Commit and Application ACK — The third option only occurs in the rare condition where you set the Ack Mode to be MSH-determined and the MSH segment contains a value in both field 15 and 16 that requires an ACK. InterSystems recommends you avoid this condition.

You use these acknowledgment conventions to send one of the three main types of ACK message content:

• Accept — The message arrived, and was accepted.

• Reject — The message arrived, but has been rejected.

• Error — The message did not arrive successfully; try again.

Use the following configuration settings to control ACK processing in a business service:

• Ack Target Config Names

• Ack Mode

• Use ACK Commit Codes

• Ignore Inbound ACK

• Add NACK ERR

• NACK Error Code

Use the following configuration settings of a business operation to control ACK processing:

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